Keeping up With Alpha Updates?

[MatthewSchenker]

Good Morning,
I upgraded to Hardy Heron alpha 3 yesterday, and I'm liking it so far!

I see from the release schedule that alpha 4 is coming out on 1/31/08 (today), followed, of course, by another alpha release.

How do I keep upgrading to the next alpha release? Does that happen through the repositories once I have 8.04 installed? Or is there something else I need to do?

Thanks,
Matt

[Fintan]

Re: Keeping up With Alpha Updates?

I have been upgrading from Alpha 2 with synaptic in the "upgrades" in the repos.

So I assume it works

[MatthewSchenker]

Re: Keeping up With Alpha Updates?

Fintan,
Do you mean those automatic notifications that pop up in the panel? If I follow those prompts, I'll get the alpha releases?
The reason I'm asking is because I'm not sure where in Kubuntu I can go to see a version number. Maybe I should know that first!
Thanks,
Matt

[Fintan]

Re: Keeping up With Alpha Updates?

Do you mean those automatic notifications that pop up in the panel? If I follow those prompts, I'll get the alpha releases?

Yes. even my kcontrol is populated

to fnd out the release version:

lsb_release -a

[MatthewSchenker]

Re: Keeping up With Alpha Updates?

Fintan,
Thanks for the mention of the "lsb_release -a" command! See, this just reveals that I'm still a beginner, since there are so many simple things I don't know. But man have I learned a lot in the past three months!
Matt

[3vi1]

Re: Keeping up With Alpha Updates?

I usually just 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade' from a console. Which is pretty safe.

Every once in a while, you will see held-back packages and need to do 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade'. The important thing to remember when you do this is that you must be careful to verify that the very next thing that comes back from the command (where it asks you "Do you want to continue [Y/n]?") does not say that there are a bunch of packages to be removed. If it does, that means that you need to wait for those packages to be updated first (so answer "N" to the prompt if you see it removing core packages!).

I've used this method since Alpha 1 and haven't gotten my system into an unstable/unbootable situation yet.